With the development of human society, people have stronger and stronger expectation on living quality especially on environmental quality, which leads to a new research field for real time monitoring surrounding environment. Currently-used environment detecting apparatus have the shortcomings such as high cost, huge space occupation, low detecting efficiency, and so on, and could not meet people's daily use requirements. In comparison, ion detectors based on high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) technology are become more and more popular in environmental detection, in that the ion detectors have the advantages of high sensitivity, fast detecting speed, wide detecting product ranges, small space occupation and low cost. Generally, the ion detectors are widely used in environmental monitoring, public security management, and so on.
FAIMS technology is formed based on Mason and McDaniel's experimental discovery result that ion mobility K is related to strength of electric field enforced thereon. Under a lower electric field strength, for example the strength of the lower electric field is lower than 11000 V/cm, the ion mobility K is not influenced by the lower electric field strength. However, when under a higher electric field, for example the strength of the higher electric field is higher than 11000 V/cm, the ion mobility K would change in accordance with the higher electric field strength in a nonlinear manner. Under a higher electric field, a relationship between the ion mobility K and the electric field strength E can be expressed as:K=K0*[1+α1(E/N)2+α2(E/N)4+L]  (1)
Where, K0 is a mobility of ion in the lower electronic field, α is ion mobility coefficient, E is the electric field strength, and N is gas density. Here if:α(E)=[α1(E/N)2α2(E/N)4+L]  (2)
The formula (1) could be simplified as:K=K0*[1+α(E)]  (3)
According to formula (3), the ion mobility K is specific for each particular kind of ion, which makes, those ions having same or similar mobility in lower electric field strength could be isolated under higher electric field strength.
In practice, when loading an impulsive voltage with high frequency and asymmetric waveform on a pair of electrode panels that are placed face to face and subsequently form a narrow space, the narrow space would thus become an electric field. When airflow carrying ions flows through the narrow space in a first direction, the ions would vibrate along a second direction of the electric field. Under a composed speed of speeds in the first direction and the second direction, the ions with different mobility would be isolated from each other. The composed speed has an X-component in a direction along the narrow space and a Y-component in a direction vertical to the direction along the narrow space. Meanwhile, if another suitable direct current (DC) voltage is loaded on the pair of electrode panels, an electric field generated by the suitable direct current would act in an opposite direction to that of the Y-component on the ions and subsequently the Y-component speed of some particular ions would be set off Consequently, the particular ions only has the X-component speed, which would lead the particular ions move along the narrow space and eventually pass through the narrow space. At the same time, ions other than the particular ions would move to the electric panel under the combined effect of their X-component and Y-component speed. In this way, the particular ions would be checked out.
In said ion detecting process, a generator to generate the voltage with asymmetric waveform meeting requirements of the FAIMS is very important, in that the waveform would directly influence the performance of the FAIMS ion detector.